Who is this vocalist? Her US fans have heard her at the New York cabaret venue 54 Below and in her widely viewed Youtube recordings. I bought her debut album ‘Stella Cole’ on Amazon, curious to see what all the fuzz was about.

Now I know. Some of her online fans compared her to Judy Garland, praise indeed, but listening now to her fresh cover of ‘Over the Rainbow’, I could believe blue birds really fly beyond the rainbow. Authenticity is a rare feature in well-worn standards, but there again, the arranger here is from the vey top drawer, Alan Broadbent. He modestly told Kathryn Shackleton in an interview in 2014: ” I’ve always wanted that swing feeling, interesting harmonies and beautiful melodies…”

The BBC’s Jazz Record Requests has just played ‘Blame it On My Youth’, an essentially bittersweet number, which Stella delivered with the gentleness and sincerity of the Girl who says I believed in Everything. Many of the songs covered come from wartime musicals such as the Wizard of Oz or Meet Me in St. Louis (staple fare for the 54 Below cabarets). Postwar fare includes ‘Walking in the Sunshine’ (probably best known for Sinatra’s 1952 recording?) but here given a rollicking rebirth alongside a swinging Hammond Organ. The most recent of the dozen songs is a version of Billie Eilish’s dreamlike ‘My Future’. Stella gives this a completely different, tentative and reflexive mood.

As a former New Yorker, there is one number of this album that exemplifies the transformation of another old show tune to a real jazz hit. I remember the Rex Harrison production of My Fair Lady on Broadway. Today I recall the character ‘Freddy’ singing ‘On the Street Where You Live’, in a way that an eight-year-old could tell that loser was never going to get the girl. But Stella’s interpretation makes me feel that overpowering feeling….

Ms. Cole has just released a new, Christmas, album, Snow, also produced by Matt Pierson with arrangements by Alan Broadbent. I suspect that will figure in my list for Santa Claus!

Tracklist:

The Boy Next Door
P.S. I Love You
(Love Is) The Tender Trap
My Foolish Heart
Over the Rainbow
Detour Ahead
Moon River
My Future
When the Sun Comes Out
Walking in the Sunshine
Blame it On My Youth
On the Street Where You Live

Produced by Matt Pierson
Band includes: Alan Broadbent (piano/arranger/conductor), Chico Pinheiro (guitar), Ben Paterson (piano & Hammond organ), Neal Milner (double bass), Keith Balla (drums), plus orchestra. Full listing at end of video above.

The post Stella Katherine Cole – ‘Stella Cole’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

This new album provides a feast of musical styles and influences: fiesta is just the word that it evokes. My memory has grown uncertain, but I think I first heard Jennifer Moore (Ayala) as a teenager, in Cambridge. I could never have predicted the depth and variety of development to come, as a vocalist, broadcaster and songwriter. YouTube has an interesting assortment of her early songs, including duets with Gilbert O’Sullivan and Horacio Palencia. Jennifer has always sung with passion and purpose, and grown a wide network of musical friends around her unique voice. Jazz was the foundation of her development but marriage to Juan Luis Ayala, and travel between Mexico, the US, Ireland and Britain, added new richness to her songs and extended her collaborations even wider. Juan’s development as a producer has been central to Ayala’s international appeal.

The eleven original songs on this Crossing are so diverse they defy any simple classification (although the press release calls them ‘jazz-soul’). For this review, I made several false starts attempting to categorise these tracks, before I realised it was necessary to remember the purposeful core of Ayala – this review now takes a functional standpoint. I think each song aims at particular listeners, for a specific impact.

For example, Love Is Surprising delivers great party music: ”we’re staying up all night !” I hope that someone (perhaps Jo Wiley on BBC Radio 2?) will interview Jennifer & Juan, about the festive mood they created.

“The Sun Has Come” delivers some Latin-influenced sway: “wild and free”, OK ? This just came out as a YouTube single, with the video showing Jennifer sailing through a vast field of poppies. How perfect it could be, to advertise an airline’s package holidays, on TV.

I guess I can hear an echo of Gilbert O’Sullivan in Step Into My Song, Ayala’s very personal tour of origins: “everything in between us will melt into the past”.

Some other people have compared Ayala to Amy Winehouse. In One Thing I Know, Jennifer does reach the desperate broken hearted, mourning their, one, love: “don’t let me go”.

Thankfully, the album also includes light-hearted pop, with “dandelions” blowin’ in the wind in “Pick Yourself Up”: I enjoyed the ripe backing vocals.

The backing singers also enrich the Gospel-infused number “You Forgive Me”: for penitent listeners who need some uplifting.

My favourite, understated, song, comes last. “Pocket” is aimed at an audience of just two, having a late night drink, when hope is wearing thin: “not the end, not yet”. Nightclubs take note !

Back in the golden era of transatlantic travel, ships strove for the accolade Blue Riband liner. Today The Crossing deserves the transatlantic Blue Riband.

TRACKLIST

Love Is Surprising
People With Walls
The Sun Has Come
Step Into My Song
One Thing I Know
Wheels Of Change
Mexico
Pick Yourself Up
My Experience
You Forgive Me
Pocket

Produced by Juan Luis Ayala, David Grant and Sam Grimley.
Recorded and mixed in London by Richard Woodcraft, at RAK studios.
Collaborating musicians Paul Turner, Alex Reeves, Chris Hill and Troy Miller.

The live launch will be in London on 5 September 2024 at the 606 Club.
The Digital Album will be released on 27 September 2024.

The post Ayala – ‘The Crossing’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

This night was devoted mainly to giving fresh lustre to 50s standards, but the Jazzato Band included more recent cinematic material (from The Godfather and Life is Beautiful) plus two original songs by guitarist Fabrizio Bonacci. Compared to the first time I met them in 2015, there was only one change to their team: Richard Muscat took up the clarinet/saxophone part, originally carried by Charlotte Jolly. Alessandro Cimaschi on double bass and Riccardo Castellani on drums completed the original line up. Their debut recording Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano subsequently collected 40 million views on YouTube.

It takes a certain panache (and discipline) to go straight from the flirtatious Un Bacio a Mezzanotte into the rocking Saint Tropez twist, but this band has it. The audience had a wide range of ages, but may have included some fans of Sophia Loren, as they joined in enthusiastically with Mambo Italiano (used in her film Scandal in Sorrento). I particularly enjoyed the Jazzato’s lively version of Carina (from Loren’s film It started in Naples).

All 21 songs (!) were performed with verve, but I reckon Bonacci’s swinging composition At Dawn really deserves to become a Standard. In Via con Me percussionist Castellani had the ‘chips, chips….’ cooked to perfection. Bassist Chimaschi really brought it all home with a Buonasera Signorina that would have had Louis Prima dancing for joy. Perhaps a reviewer should not have favourites, but on this Midsummer night Loxston’s smouldering Estate melted my heart.

SET LIST

Un Bacio a Mezzanotte (Giovannini/Kramer)
Saint Tropez twist (Di Capri)
Carina (Lojacono/Testa)
Love in Portofino (Buscaglione)
Guarda Che Luna (Buscaglione/Ehrenfried)
Volare (Modugno)
Sott’er cielo de Roma (Taccani/Bertini)
At Dawn (Bonacci)
Estate (Martino)
O’Saraccino (Carosone)
Mambo Italiano (Merrill)
Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano (Carosone)
Come Prima (Modugno)
Tintarella di Luna (De Filippi/Mina)
Il Cielo in una Stanza (Paoli/Mina)
La Bambola (Zambrini/Cini)
Southern Impressions (Bonacci)
Brucia la terra (Rota)
Via con Me (Conte)
Buonasera Signorina (Prima)
La Vita è Bella medley (Piovani)

Jazzato have issued two albums with tracks from the list above: La Dolce Vita (2018) and Back in the Swing of Things (2021).

LINK: Pizza Express Live website
Hetty and the Jazzato Band website

The post ‘La Dolce Vita’ with with Hetty and the Jazzato Band at The Pheasantry first appeared on UK Jazz News.

This last year has seen Jo Harrop really “break through”, including winning a Parliamentary Jazz Award for Album of the Year (‘When Winter Turns To Spring’, Jo Harrop and Paul Edis, 2023) and US triumphs on both East and West Coasts. Thankfully, success has not changed her character, as I witnessed in a basement club during the London Jazz Festival: where she supported less celebrated singers with typical generosity.

Jo is a singer-songwriter, and most of the songs are originals, with diverse collaborators. All the tracks (below) are interesting, but I will focus on the five songs that moved me most.

Her here’s to all the Beautiful Fools is the culmination of creating many songs with a soulful, bluesy influence. D-Day memorial events are going on nearby, as I write this review, and connoisseurs of Wartime love songs might consider this a modern torch song: delicately overflowing with memories of lost love?

Whiskey or the Truth makes a complete contrast. This is an elegy for empty promises and ‘a love that never ran dry’. Languid and gently self-mocking, the feeling resembles Mark Twain’s saying “cheer up, the worst is yet to come”!

Leonard Cohen’s Travelling Light comes from his final album, ‘You want it darker’. This provides Jo with the perfect, sparse framework to flesh out…. e.g. ’if the road leads back to you’. Her fans may also recognise Jo’s advice to travel light when touring (Mothers in Jazz, 2023).

Her title track The Path of a Tear was recorded in a sound booth originally built for Stevie Nicks. Another torch song, this ‘tear’ touches the cheek you once caressed. An exquisite yearning for lost love that is now irretrievable…. ‘lost like a raindrop in the ocean’.

My favourite track I have saved here for last: You’ll never be Lonely in Soho. Back in 1972 I was doing voluntary work in Soho, and this humorous number captures the creative, sleazy, craziness of that place better than any other song I know. If they ever make a movie of Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell (Keith Waterhouse, 1989) then this song should be on the soundtrack.

Track list

Beautiful Fools
Whisky or the Truth
A Love like This
Travelling Light (Leonard Cohen cover)
The Path of a Tear
You’ll never be Lonely in Soho
If it Wasn’t for Bad (Leon Russell cover)
Too Close to the Sun
Hurt
Goodbye (Steve Earle cover)
Stay Here Tonight (bonus track)

Recorded at the Village Studios, Los Angeles.
Jo Harrop: Vocals
Anthony Wilson: Guitar
Jim Cox: Rhodes piano, Hammond B-3 Organ
David Piltch: Bass
Larry Klein: Bass
Victor Indrizzo: Drums
Producer: Larry Klein

Launch gigs :
5 June, The Django, New York
7 June, Village Studios in Los Angeles
4 July, Ronnie Scott’s, London

The post Jo Harrop – ‘The Path of a Tear’ first appeared on UK Jazz News.

In the intimate setting of the Granary, fourteen varied numbers were interspersed with a treasury of family anecdotes. These delighted this reviewer: the first live jazz that I ever heard was an unforgettable gig in the 1960s, with her parents Johnny Dankworth and Cleo Laine. Now, this concert included a bonus: first-hand memories of past masters like Marvin Hamlisch or Michel Legrand.

The wide range of song styles, genres and periods would be difficult to summarise (and Wood’s original arrangements often took us a long way beyond the ‘standards’ selected). The set-list from my concert notes is below, with apologies for any oversights…

To pick just a few for impact, Ms. Dankworth was Cinderella in the original West End production of Into The Woods, and this Christmas she sang “No One is Alone” in duet, with her mother Cleo (born 1927).

It was no surprise that several show-tunes were included: over three decades later, I can still recall the Dankworth’s poignant Cinderella. For Ellington’s “It Don’t mean a Thing”, she produced a fantastic scat, that one imagines the Duke himself would approve.

The evening provided two show-stoppers: a flamenco embellishment of “The Windmills Of Your Mind”, and simply amazing phrasing and control for the finale “Send in the Clowns”. The stranger sitting next to me summed up the evening’s music: we had been “in the presence of Greatness.”

SET LIST

My Ship (Weill/Ira Gershwin)
Baubles, Bangles and Beads (Wright/Forrest after Borodin.)
No One is Alone (Sondheim)
I’m Beginning to See the Light (Ellington/Hodges/James)
Lucky to be Me (Bernstein/Comden/Green)
It don’t mean a thing (Ellington)
The Windmills Of Your Mind (Legrand)
The Way We Were (Hamlisch)
Side by side (Sondheim)
You’ve got a Friend (Carole King)
The first time ever I saw your Face (MacColl)
The Folks who live on the Hill (Kern, arr. Sir John Dankworth)
Sitting on Top of the World (Vinson/Chatmon)
Send in the Clowns (Sondheim)

The post An Evening with Jacqui Dankworth & Charlie Wood at Stapleford Granary first appeared on UK Jazz News.